Mark Ravenhill — best known for “Shopping and F – – king,” a 1998 hit at New York Theatre Workshop — is one of Britain’s finest provocateurs. His 2006 play “Pool (No Water)” spares us the rapes, vomiting and drug abuse of the earlier one, but that doesn’t mean it’s any kinder.

Here, unidentified friends take turns recounting what happened after another, the most successful of the group, took a swan dive into . . . well, the title should give you an idea.

The characters are all artists, and they’re a horrid bunch: bitchy, petty, envious. Ravenhill paints a vicious portrait of resentful thwarted ambition and the art world’s exploitation of misery and suffering.

The buddies visit the comatose victim, but not to offer support or care: They turn her into an art project by taking photos of her inanimate body.

“You’ve patronized my exhibitions in the bohemian quarter,” one of them crows. “At last, at last, I can patronize you.”

This is poetic justice: The woman had hit it big by selling blood and bandages from an AIDS-stricken pal to collectors. In this gallery of jerks, you’d be hard-pressed to tell who’s more revolting.

Director Ianthe Demos has staged the piece with just five white benches doubling as props and set. It does the job well enough. But the young cast doesn’t fully render the play’s razor-sharp edges — only Richard Saudek suggests the right callous cynicism. It’s an artist-eat-artist world out there, after all.